


it is there, my dear, where we'll begin again

by thefigureinthecorner



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Character Undeath, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Multi, Other characters show up later but I'm not gonna spoil anything in the tags, Possible Character Death, Trans Caleb Michaels, Trans Owen Thompson | Agent Green, Violence, Warnings May Change, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies did not exist in popular media in this AU, no preconceived zombie notions, some relationships take a while to show up but they will all be there, they're a fun new exciting thing for these characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21804301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: The world ends with a bite and a wave of terror.(Or: *slaps roof of tbs* this baby can fit so much zombie angst)
Relationships: Adam Hayes/Caleb Michaels, Joan Bright/Owen Thompson | Agent Green, Samantha Barnes/Mark Bryant
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. all the fear and the fire of the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this fic for literal months and only just now finished the first chapter because I was so focused on writing the Fun Juicy Apocalypse Angst that comes later on, wooooooo
> 
> But it's posted now! So hell yeah. I'm lowkey disappointed that I didn't get it posted in time to be the first zombie fic in the tag, but oh well, what are you gonna do
> 
> Also, this fic has a playlist you can listen to here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1q8pgQ0K8LloazU63r31Xf
> 
> Fic title comes from Take Us Back by Alela Diane; chapter title comes from Wasteland, Baby by Hozier.
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings: school lockdowns, panic, blood, and violence.

“Did you hear Rose’s family skipped town?”

Adam looks up from where he’s swapping out textbooks in his locker. “No, I didn’t. Why? Did she say?”

Caleb shakes his head. “Nah, not specifically. Seemed like she didn’t really know either. Something her mom said about how ‘bad things would happen to them if they stayed’ or whatever. Emily and her family are gone too, apparently the warning extended to them. I guess. ‘Emily is important,’ cryptic precognate shit, you know how Rose’s mom can be.”

“Yeah, I’ve talked to her enough times, I think.” His face screws up a bit. “You think it’s something we should be worried about too? Something bad happening here?”

“Nah, probably not. If it were something that big wouldn’t Rose’s mom have gotten more than that?”

“Dunno. Ugh, now I’m gonna be worried about that.”

Caleb feels a stab of anxiety. “Shit, sorry--”

“Nah, don’t apologize, it’s all good. I just--” He cuts off and stares, startled, through a window in one of the classrooms across the hall, behind Caleb’s back. “Woah, holy shit, what the _fuck--”_

“What-- what happened? Adam, why are you freaking out?” Caleb whirls around and-- “Holy shit, is that _blood_ on the window?”

“Y-yeah, some dude totally just started-- eating a guy? I think? Oh my god. Oh my god.”

Adam isn’t the only one who’s seen it-- Caleb can feel the growing fear in the hallways as people start murmuring, trying to peer into the classroom. The teacher who’d been sitting inside-- Mr. Baird, Caleb thinks his name is-- ushers them away from the windows and out into the hallway, bundling them into one of the windowless interior rooms and telling them to “stay inside, back away” and locking the classroom door behind him. The loudspeaker crackles to life.

“Attention, students. We are entering a lockdown situation. Please move to the nearest interior room and avoid windows. This is not a drill. Repeat--”

“Oh, fuck,” Caleb grabs Adam’s hand and pulls him along as he dashes towards that same room Mr. Baird had ducked into, pressing into the flow of panicking students as they rush to follow the principal’s instructions. The panic is _too much,_ everyone feeling the same thing at once, it’s suffocating, but he needs to make sure Adam’s safe, he _needs_ to--

“Caleb? Caleb, we’re in the classroom now, I’m here, just focus on my emotions, okay?” Adam tries to calm himself down, give Caleb something to anchor himself to. He pulls Caleb’s head to rest against his shoulder, whispering to him, trying to make sure nobody overhears. “I’m right here.”

Caleb nods against his neck, trying to take deep breaths. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Mr. Baird shushes them, directing students to barricade the door with desks and chairs. His face is drawn and pale as he does so, a stark contrast to the confidence he’s trying to put into his voice. His fear is loud, mixed with some fierce protectiveness. Sharp, staticy. Bright fucking orange, with a stab of some really muddy grey color. Danger, danger, danger.

Once the door is barricaded and the initial panic dies down, though, the room is dead silent, save for the occasional sniffle. Everyone’s waiting with bated breath, hyperaware, hyperfocused on every small sound, every tiny shuffle of bags or feet, every single footstep that passes by their door.

One of the school security officers stops outside the door, speaking through a walkie talkie.

“B Hall’s clear. I’m going to--”

Running footsteps. A familiar voice: “Oh, god, they’re after me, fuck, _help_ \--”

“Oh, _shit--”_

Gunshots. Kids gasping, screaming. Pained screams from the hallway. The officer panicking. A voice on the other end of the line. Caleb grips Adam’s hand and pushes further against the corner he’s pressed up in, the textbook he’d picked up as his “heavy projectile” held at the ready in his other hand.

“Reid? Reid, what’s going on?”

“I-- oh, god, that wasn’t-- kid, kid can you hear me? Shit--”

Odd screeches. They sound off, inhuman. More running.

“ _Jesus--”_ more gunshots. “Okay. Okay, I think I got all of them. Gonna get these kids out of here, this hallway’s not safe.”

A knock on the door. Mr. Baird pushes the desks and chairs aside and cracks it open, hands shaking. “Officer Reid?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we gotta move. Those… people, I think, they’re strong. They’ve broken through some doors already. Stay close, and stay behind me. Baird, you take up the back.”

They file out of the classroom, and Adam hears some gasps ahead of him before he sees what they’re reacting to. On the hallway floor, there are three bodies, bleeding out. Two look like they’ve been dead far longer than they actually have, but the third--

“Oh, god. That’s-- That’s Tyler.” Adam’s voice is weak.

Caleb says nothing, just presses his lips together and tightens his hold on Adam’s hand again. The hallway is very, very quiet.

Until Tyler grabs Adam.

\----

Wadsworth is in the middle of packing up the last items in her office when the security breach alarms start blaring. She’s on her feet immediately, directing people in lockdown procedures as she breezes down the hallway to find someone who knows what’s happening. She finds Owen in a waiting room, trying to talk down some panicking patients. She pulls him aside.

“Green. What’s going on?”

“I-I don’t know specifics, but it sounds like multiple assaults occurred just outside the gates.” He keeps his voice low so as not to worry any of the atypicals around him. “We’re going into lockdown as a precaution, there’s been news reports of similar incidents around the city and some of them have broken through fences, so we don’t want to take any chances with the safety of our clients.”

Something about that makes Wadsworth’s heart clench. She tries not to let that show in her voice as she speaks. “Around the city?”

“Yes. All at around the same time.”

“Was the--”

Her question is answered by the reporters on the waiting room TV cutting to a live feed of the incidents, showing drone footage-- outside a pharmacy, near a highway, at one of the train stations.

At a high school.

Adam’s high school.

“Green, I’m leaving things to you, I have to go find Adam.”

“What-- Director, it’s not _safe--”_

“Adam’s more important. It’s safe here, I’ll go out, I’ll bring him back, and he’ll be safe.”

She hears the beginning of another protest as she exits the room, but she’s gone before he can finish his sentence.

The roads are a mess.

Luckily most of the cars are headed the opposite direction of her, as they’re trying to get out of the downtown area and not head towards it, but her side is littered with bodies, with broken glass and crashed cars and toppled trash cans, and god, the world’s already started to turn upside-down. Less than an hour since the first reports came in and everything’s dissolved into chaos. Police cars everywhere, military vehicles already rolling in, news helicopters and drones hovering overhead-- it’s a nightmare.

She speeds up. Hazards be damned, Adam is in the middle of this, and she is going to find him.

\----

_“No!”_

Tyler-- Tyler, who had just been dead only seconds ago-- has his teeth sunk into Adam’s arm, just below his shoulder. He’s bitten through Adam’s hoodie sleeve, and the blood is starting to spread, and Caleb _lunges_ at him.

“ _Get off of him!”_

And it’s like Damien, but it’s worse this time, it’s so much worse, and it’s his anger alone this time instead of the anger of six other people swirling around in his chest and boiling over. His anger, his fear, his own desire to protect.

He only stops when Tyler is nothing more than a broken mess on the floor of the hallway and he feels the world tilt and realizes the feeling is coming from Adam. It has to be, because the rest of the students and staff have all cleared out already and run for their own safety and left the two of them behind.

And, god, he did it again. He did it again, and he said he never would, but he doesn’t have the time to feel sorry for that now because Adam’s face looks ashen and he’s clutching his arm to try and stem the bleeding and he’s _scared_ and in pain and oh, fuck.

He does the only thing that makes sense to him in that moment-- scoops Adam up in his arms and runs, runs until he’s out of the building and in the warmth of the late-April midday.

It’s worse outside.

The world’s turned on its head in what felt like a matter of minutes and Caleb can feel the panic of the city pressing in on him. He’s close to hyperventilating and he feels lightheaded, and he can’t tell if it’s from the near-panic-attack he’s worked himself into or if it’s from Adam trying not to pass out from blood loss or if it’s a combination of the two. But Adam is mostly unresponsive at this point and Caleb can’t worry about himself right now.

He recognizes a car in the school parking lot.

Annabelle’s.

He runs for it, and Annabelle steps out as he does, more emotion on her face than he’s ever seen from her, and in that moment he’s glad she’s immune to his ability because from the fear in her eyes alone he can tell that her emotions would probably knock him over.

“Caleb, what happened?” She pulls open the backdoor for him and ushers both of them inside.

“I don’t know, Tyler-- I mean, some kid-- some kid attacked him, and he-- I--”

“Caleb, take deep breaths.” He’s never heard her sound so compassionate. She removes her suit jacket and hands it back to him before pulling out of the lot. “Here, use this to stem the bleeding.”

“O-Okay.” He tries to follow her advice as he does so, breath stuttering on the first few attempts, but eventually he gets a steady rhythm. He holds the dark fabric to the wound on Adam’s arm and stares out the window at the unfamiliar streets. “Where are you going?”

“The AM. It’s secure, it’s safe, and it has medical facilities. We’ll be safe there.”

“What?”

Anabelle sighs. “I know you have some... _preconceived_ notions about the AM, but nothing’s going to happen there. It really is for the security. And to get Adam help. It’s our best bet, what with how overrun the hospitals probably are right now.”

Caleb considers for a moment. “Okay. But-- what about our families? I mean, my sister, she’s still at school, and--”

He stops when he catches Annabelle’s face in the rearview mirror. They’re not going back.

“We’ll look for them when it’s safer out. Right now, it’s not. We can’t afford to look for them now.” Her voice is quiet.

There’s no fighting her on this.

As much as he wants to, he can tell she’s not going to budge, and the emotions quieting down inside him as they leave the city make him feel too tired to try anyway.

“Alright,” he says instead, and turns his focus to Adam the rest of the ride. Adam’s eyes are closed now, but he’s breathing, and Caleb tries to hone in on his sleepy, muted emotions, the gentle ocean that’s always there.

The driveway into the AM is paved with gravel and he hears the crunch of it as they drive up. The security officers at the entrance let them in as soon as they see Wadsworth, and they waste no time in parking by the entrance and running into the building.

“The medbay’s this way.” Wadsworth gestures for Caleb to follow her, and he does, careful to avoid jostling Adam while moving as quickly as he can. Wadsworth is fast, but Caleb has long legs, and he’s able to keep up fairly well.

A man-- tall, red hair, glasses-- stops them in the hall on the way. “Director, what’s--”

“We’re in a hurry, Green,” and, oh, this must be that AM agent that Dr. Bright mentioned, that’s why he looks kind of familiar, “my nephew is hurt and he needs to get to the medbay. Now.”

Agent Green pales. “How was he hurt?”

“He was bitten,” Caleb pipes up, voice still shaky from earlier. “He was attacked at school and someone bit him.”

“We don’t have time for this--” Wadsworth sounds impatient, but Agent Green shakes his head, growing paler again, and god, how pale can this dude get? “What is it?”

“The reports coming in, they think the bites are how this-- this thing spreads. Everyone who’s been bitten has turned violent, the hospitals are getting hit worst by it.”

Caleb can feel the growing horror in Agent Green as he speaks, and he can see the emotion matched on Annabelle’s face.

“So you’re saying--”

“He’s been infected too.”


	2. counting your face among the living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh. long time no update.
> 
> whoops?

Maybe it won’t be the same for him, Annabelle had said. There’s no guarantee it will happen if he hasn’t turned yet. He might be fine. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

So here they are, in the medbay, hours later. Adam is awake, fresh stitches in his arm, now wrapped in bandages, and restraints on his wrists to be on the safe side. Wadsworth had come in a bit ago but left quickly, saying she had important business to take care of. Now it’s just the two of them and Caleb can feel the fear churning in him as he clutches Adam’s hand.

“If-- if something does happen,” Adam starts, and Caleb shushes him.

“No. No, that’s not going to happen, don’t--”

“Caleb, just let me say this.” Adam takes a deep, shaky breath. “If something happens, if I start to turn, turn into some sort of monster like Tyler did, just. Make sure I die before I do. I don’t want to feel that. I don’t want to feel like I’m losing myself. And I don’t want  _ you  _ to feel that, not from me. Just... I don't want that to be me. Please don't fight them on it, okay? Please.”

They’re both crying openly now. “I don’t… I can’t. You can’t.”

“ _ Please _ .”

Caleb breathes in, slowly, like the weight of what he’s being asked to do is making it difficult to draw the air into his lungs. Like his shoulders are having trouble rising. The silence in the medbay is deafening as he holds that breath in, holds it as though if he lets it go then he’s letting Adam go too. But he answers.

“Okay.”

And that should make Adam feel better, should make him feel lighter, but it doesn’t. The fear just curls up in his gut and makes itself at home.

“Thank you,” he says anyway. The words taste like chalk dust.

The medbay door opens and Owen-- he insisted that Caleb call him Owen, while trying to calm him down from the anxious mess he had worked himself into while Adam was getting his stitches put in, and Caleb was actually thankful for the lack of formality-- walks in, trailing Sam, Mark, and Dr. Bright behind him.

“What— what are you guys doing here?” Caleb stands to greet them, one hand quickly trying to swipe at the tears in his eyes, other hand still firmly clasped in Adam’s. He’d known Owen was planning on calling them, and he was grateful for some familiar faces, but he definitely hadn’t expected any of them to show up.

“Owen made a good case,” Dr. Bright says, though not without grimacing as she does so. Even without that, Caleb can feel the reluctance behind her words.

“The AM  _ is _ pretty secure,” Mark begrudgingly concedes with a halfhearted shrug. “Know that from experience. And, well…” his eyes dart to Adam. “He mentioned Adam was hurt.”

Sam nods next to him, before the concern builds and she steps forward to stand near Caleb and Adam. “Are you two okay?”

And there’s the hard question.

Caleb sighs and sits back down. “I’m not hurt, but Adam…”

“I was bitten.” Adam gestures towards his arm with his head. “Apparently everyone who’s been bitten so far has turned violent, so they’re keeping me restrained right now. Precautions.” His face goes dark. “Could've been worse.”

The words sit heavy over the group before another question nags at the back of Caleb’s mind. He turns to Owen. “Did you manage to reach either of our families? Our parents, or Alice, or anyone? I tried calling them but I have really bad service right now and the call didn’t go through, so.”

Owen shakes his head. “No. Nobody picked up when I called either of their numbers. I’m sorry.”

Caleb nods, head hanging. “Yeah. Okay. I figured that might happen.”

Adam hisses. “Shit, yeah, my parents are at work, they’re probably getting overrun with injuries at the hospital right now. I’m not surprised they didn’t pick up.”

Caleb feels the worry and anxiety begin to claw its way up Adam’s stomach and squeezes his hand tighter. “What is it?”

“Huh? Oh, no, nothing, just… I kind of just realized I might never see them again. I mean, given, well. Everything.”

The atmosphere in the room shifts at that and the emotions go with it. From Mark and Dr. Bright— a soft sadness, almost pitying but not quite there. From Sam— empathizing. She’s been there before. And from Owen— a bit of the same sadness as Mark and Dr. Bright, but with a cautious optimism behind it. Caleb quirks an eyebrow at him. It goes unnoticed, but Owen speaks anyway.

“We’ll get you to your parents. Somehow. You’ll see them again.”

But he doesn’t fully believe what he’s saying. His words sound sincere but Caleb feels the twinge of doubt behind them. He’s trying to reassure, not making a promise. He’s trying to make Adam feel better. And it works, a bit— the dread unwinds itself in Adam’s chest a bit and Caleb can feel the weight drop in his own chest too.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Adam leans back against the back of the bed and closes his eyes.

“Tired?” Mark guesses.

“Yeah, it’s just been a long day.” Adam grimaces. “Arm hurts. Got a headache. Might die soon. All that fun stuff.”

“I’m sorry, Adam. Is there anything— I mean, do you want—“ Sam fumbles, not really sure what to say.

“I think we should just let him rest and be with Caleb.” Dr. Bright begins to pull everyone out of the room. Owen nods.

“Right. Yes. There’s a call button if you two need anything, and let a nurse or doctor know if anything changes.”

The door shuts closed behind the four of them and the room goes quiet, Caleb and Adam left alone together again.

Adam sighs.

“I think I’m gonna take a nap now if that’s okay with you? I’m just… really tired.”

Caleb feels a surge of his own concern—  _ is this it, is this the end, am I going to have to feel him die—  _ but he nods. “Yeah. Get some rest, I’ll be here.”

“Mkay.” Adam drifts off quickly after that, and Caleb leans his head against the mattress, letting his own exhaustion take over and falling asleep like that, hand in Adam’s.

**Author's Note:**

> (spoilers, since I don't know when I'll get the next chapter up and I don't want people sitting around thinking I'm going to kill Adam but I wanted to end the chapter here for Suspense and Pacing Reasons: he doesn't turn)


End file.
